Every time I need to re-define the path to be one directory back, I do something similar to this:

auto p = boost::filesystem::current_path();
p /= "../";

The problem is, that when I output 'p', it will show me the path with "../" still tacked on.
How do I get this evaluated each time I decide to go back a directory. I would like going back a directory to make the path shorter- instead of making the path longer and longer every time.

I thought one of these functions might do it, as they take a path by reference,boost::filesystem::absolute(...)boost::filesystem::canonical(...)
but after calling them and re-outputting 'p', the result still shows a "../";